She was a great monarch. We learned a bit about her in history here in good ole Canuck-agogo-land. Yep, yep, good ole&#39; Vic. She was the grandmother of Kaiser Wilhelm II..evil man. My stars, she had really puffy cheeks...really pasty skin, she really let herself go...

Originally posted by Fireweaver@Oct 26th, 2003 - 9:18 pm she was a bit old, and had lost the love of her life. Not to mention her children and grandkids kept giving her grief. It&#39;s a small wonder she didn&#39;t always look picture perfect :)

They could&#39;ve spared her the powder..she looks so pasty. She looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy....on coke...and as if she was on coke but did not know how to use it so she smeared it all over her cheeks instead. Haha....*cough* Yep, yep...

Alexandrina Victoria, 1819–1901, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1837–1901) and Empress of India (1876–1901). She was born in Kensington Palace in London on May 24th, 1819 and the only child of Edward, duke of Kent ( fourth son of George III ), and Princess Mary Louise Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

Early Reign

Victoria&#39;s father died before she was a year old. Upon the death (1830) of George IV, she was recognized as heir to the British throne, and in 1837, at the age of 18, she succeeded her uncle, William IV, to the throne. With the accession of a woman, the connection between the English and Hanoverian thrones ceased in accordance with the Salic law of Hanover. One of the young queen&#39;s advisers was Baron Stockmar, sent by her uncle, King Leopold I of the Belgians.
Her first prime minister, Viscount Melbourne, became her close friend and adviser. In 1839, when Melbourne&#39;s Whig cabinet resigned, Victoria refused to dismiss her Whig ladies of the bedchamber, the accepted gesture of confidence in the incoming party. The Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel, declined to form a cabinet, and Melbourne remained in office.

Marriage to Prince Albert

In 1840, Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Albert, with whom she was very much in love, became the dominant influence in her life. Her first child, Victoria, later empress of Germany, was born in 1840, and the prince of Wales, later Edward VII, in 1841. Victoria had nine children. Their marriages and those of her grandchildren allied the British royal house with those of Russia, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Romania, and several of the German states.
Through Albert&#39;s efforts, Victoria was reconciled with the Tories, and she became very fond of Peel during his second ministry (1841–46). She was less happy with the Whig ministry that followed, taking particular exception to the adventurous foreign policy of Viscount Palmerston. The resulting friction was a factor in Palmerston&#39;s dismissal from office in 1851. The queen and Albert also influenced the formation of Lord Aberdeen&#39;s coalition government in 1852. Royal popularity was increased by the success of the Crystal Palace exposition (1851), planned and carried through by Albert.
It began to wane again, however, when it was rumored on the eve of the Crimean War that the royal couple was pro-Russian. After the outbreak (1854) of the war, Victoria took part in the organization of relief for the wounded and instituted the Victoria Cross for bravery. She also reconciled herself to Palmerston, who became prime minister in 1855 and proved a vigorous war leader.

Widowhood and Later Years

In 1861, Albert (who had been named prince consort in 1857) died. Victoria&#39;s grief was so great that she did not appear in public for three years and did not open Parliament until 1866; her prolonged seclusion damaged her popularity. Her reappearance was largely the work of Benjamin Disraeli, who, together with William Gladstone, dominated the politics of the latter part of Victoria&#39;s reign.
Disraeli, adroit in his personal relations with Victoria, became the queen&#39;s great favorite. In 1876 he secured for her the title empress of India, which pleased her greatly; she was ardently imperialistic and intensely interested in the welfare of her colonial subjects, particularly the Indians. Victoria&#39;s relations with Gladstone, on the other hand, were very stiff; she disliked him personally and disapproved of many of his policies, especially Irish Home Rule.
In her old age, Victoria was enormously popular. Jubilees were held in 1887 and 1897 to celebrate the 50th and 60th years of the longest English reign. The queen was not highly intelligent, but her conscientiousness and strict morals helped to restore the prestige of the crown and to establish it as a symbol of public service and imperial unity.

Victoria's children and grandchildren can be found in most of the European royal families of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Catholic and Orthodox ones such as Spain and Russia as well as Protestant ones.

I watched a fascinating documentary on PBS about how Queen Victoria was determined to marry her many children and grand children into the various royal houses of Europe. She ambition was to have her descendants reign over all of Europe. It didnt last long, ofcourse, the big players were gone in the early part of the 20th century. The Czar's family was massacred, the Kaiser had to abdicate, except for the British side ofcourse.

I wonder how history would be different if Prince Albert had not died. The role of the monarchy seems to have diminished as a result of her widowhood. I recall someone put up a for rent sign at Buckingham Palace because of the inactivity there in the 1860s.

Maybe the British monarchy would have been more active and there may have been a need to trim its powers in the late 19th or early 20th century. Victoria was content to become more of a figurehead than a hands on player in government affairs after Albert's death. On the other hand, how would Albert have read Otto von Bismarck and the aggressive policies of his grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II? Could Victoria have done something to head off the coming cataclysm? No Great War. No Hitler. No Stalin. Interesting...

Do you think that either Victoria or Albert could have exerted much influence over Wilhelm II, though? Anyway, it seems that Europe was always going to go to war, it was just a matter of when! They all planned for it: Prussia had the Schlieffen Plan, France had Plan XVII, etc. Still, it is interesting to think that, hypothetically, if Victoria was alive when Wilhelm was at his autocratic peak, what would she have said to him?

__________________

"Yes, that's it; I'm a janitor so I couldn't think of the word "sad". I was gonna say it makes me feel so mop." - The Janitor, on Scrubs

Wilhelm was estranged from his mother, the gorgeous Princess Royal Victoria, Queen Victoria's eldest child. Bismarck encouraged the rift. Both Victorias died in 1901.

I'm wondering if Albert could have read Bismarck's intentions and exerted a subtle counter influence.

I agree that nationalism was rising and people were wowed out by the new weapons, quick firng artillery, high explosive shells, and machine guns, without understanding how devastating they would be. Both France and Germany thought war would be quick and easy, although the Civil War battle at Petersburg, Virginia was a vivid forecast of the horrors to come with trenches and monstrous casualties.

Also Prussia/Germany pressed a hard peace on France and added insult to injury by crowning the first Kaiser in Notre Dame de Paris, guaranteeing a grudge match that came in 1914. The USA in its more humble days avoided a similar mistake by signing the peace treaty with Mexico in, as I recall, Guadalupe-Hidalgo instead of Mexico City.

This means that any interventions by Albert were needed in the 1860s and, at the very latest, in 1871. The world would have been much better had Victoria and Albert prevailed upon Germany to be less arrogant. Victoria and Albert were also friendly with Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie. So Victoria and Albert might have been able to cool things off on both sides and avoid the war or broker a more palatable settlement had war broken out.

Which raises an ultimate what if. If nuclear fission had been discovered during a long peace in the twentieth century, then a nuclear exchange could have occurred when two powers finally did decide to have it out. One of those powers could have been the USA.

Queen Victoria died on 22nd January 1901 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight and was buried in The Mausoleum, Frogmore, Windsor, on 4th February 1901 following a State Funeral in St. George's Chapel on 2nd February 1901. After the funeral her coffin lay-in-state in The Albert Memorial Chapel for two days and was then taken to The Mausoleum by The Royal Horse Artillery. Her son, Edward, had been proclaimed King Edward VII.